Just in time for Christmas, we have the rest of the Christmas with the Flamingos tracks. Some are good, some are crap, all are for you! Merry Christmas, goblins!

Winter Girl: A 6 year-old’s love song to his snow bunny.

Father of the Son of God: A song about Joseph, the most forgotten member of the holy family.

Always Christmas Eve: The idea was that it seems sort of sweet - every day is like Christmas Eve with this guy’s girlfriend - until you realize that Christmas Eve sort of sucks.

It’s Christmas Again: I don’t know how I wrote this song, but I really like it. It’s a song for people who like to get drunk on Christmas.
The Greatest Gift: I think this one is sweet. Jason Madison from Bigboote and the Scurvy Pirates, who played the angry Christmas elf in the stage version of Christmas with the Flamingos, thought it sucked. I love Jason Madison and respect his opinion, so feel free to agree with him.

And, the filler:

For the completists in the crowd, here are two songs that are pretty desperately awful that also appeared on the album. Download at your own risk.

Angels: I don’t do sincere well.

Day Out, Day In: Christmas rap. Bad idea.

For the rest of the Christmas with the Flamingos album, visit my music page! Thanks for listening, and enjoy!

God bless the Internets sometimes, right? What did we do before the days when someone could post a list of the 50 greatest cartoons of all time complete with links to the cartoons themselves? Answer: we socialized with one another.

(Thanks, Boingboing!)

Here are some more Christmas hits! Only 4 shopping days left, kids! Use them wisely!

Christmas with the Flamingos: Christmas with the Flamingos, the play, was about my relationship with a group of stuffed animals who I pretended was my band. The joke was that the stuffed animals were way cooler than me. This song has a really long intro, but I still think it’s pretty cool.

A Most Delicious Christmas: This is a horrible, frightening song about what to do when you find Santa in your living room. It should not be listened to by anyone, ever.

I’m Spending Christmas in Love: With songs this hot, why am I not an internationally recognized superstar? Seriously, can some artist just discover me already and start covering my songs? This living in obscurity bullshit is really starting to get to me.

May God have mercy on our souls.

(Thanks, Boingboing!)

For the past few months, Salon has been running an unsigned-band Song Search competition. The best band in America, Bishop Allen, won. Unfortunately, their song is available for purchase which counteracts some of the rules, so they were disqualified. Although this is semi-sad, they are sure to get some of the publicity they deserve.

I love Bishop Allen. I first saw them play at the opening night party for The Tank, a New York City venue that is owned by some of my friends. I bought their CD and immediately developed a not-so-secret crush on them. Later, they played one of our CP parties (with We Are Scientists, another incredible band, and the Oxford Collapse, both of whom are now poised to take over the world).

This year, Bishop Allen embarked on a project to release one EP of new material every month, and so far, there hasn’t been a bad song in the bunch. There will be a time in the near future when they will be huge, so get in now while you still have a chance to see them in a small venue.

Sidenote: the only reservation I have about them is that I have met them many times and played with them twice and they still have no idea who I am. Such is the fate of the “guy who plays funny music.” It should not change your opinion of their music, which is undeniably fantastic. It should, however, give you newfound respect for me.

In what has to be the biggest case of allegiance to misguided ideals that I’ve ever seen, the founder of Facebook.com turned down a $1.6 billion offer from Yahoo! because he didn’t want to be labeled a sell-out. Read that again, if you have to. The “genius” who recreated Friendster (I know the kids love MySpace, but can Friendster please get some love for A) being first and B) actually taking the time to care about their site design?) and attached .edu addresses to it is so scared of his boys calling him a homo that he turned down 1.6 billion dollars. (Side note re: MySpace vs. Friendster … I remember that crucial societal shift that happened when MySpace overtook Friendster and I remember it making me feel incredibly old. It was the exact same feeling I got when I learned that ‘NSync were outselling the Backstreet Boys. I was like, “what?”)

Look, if you’re a musician and you don’t want to sell your songs to advertisers, that’s one thing. If you’re a writer who doesn’t want to be on Oprah, that’s another. I even give respect to the Craig’s List founders for not caring about turning a profit. But this kid is not defending substance, nor is he opting out because he doesn’t want to make money. He’s holding out because he thinks his business model is so genius he is bound to make more than $1.6 billion.

I think the biggest question here is: where the Hell did Yahoo! get $1.6 billion? I haven’t searched the web using Yahoo! since I was on GopherMail!

Well, sort of. For people who are into publishing in the way that others are into things that sort of matter, like sports or movies. Judith Regan was fired by Rupert Murdoch from her own imprint. Ostensibly, it is because she was going to publish the OJ Simpson book. Gimme a freaking break on that one. Books don’t just “sneak up” on you. (Unlike OJ … ha ha.) Everyone thought it was going to make money, and then the families of the people who were murdered got upset (unpredictable shocker!) and now World-Renowned Good Guy Rubert Murdoch throws someone a bone and dumps a woman he probably just didn’t like very much.

Are these people that wrapped up in their insular little world that they think it matters? OJ Simpson is a freak show. The public’s opinion on the matter lasts only until the next shark attack. Funny, but I can’t see office workers in Boise standing around the water cooler saying, “did you hear the news about Judith Regan? Thank God she was fired! The world is now safe from poor publishing decisions forever!” If Murdoch actually had any concern for the public’s well being, he would have fired whoever gave the green light to Marley and Me.

The real winners here are Regan’s lawyers, because Murdoch just gave them a license to print cash. Get ready to say goodbye to .0001% of your income, Rupert! Stings, don’t it?

PS: The important news in publishing is that CP’s Danger City II is now available for order on Amazon. I coedited the book and have a short story in it, called “The Alcoholic Monkey Who Took Over My Mind and Turned Me into a Cold-Blooded Killer.” At just $9.00, it’s a steal!

This is my personal favorite from the Christmas with the Flamingos album. I wanted to write a sweet little Christmas song in which something slightly darker was going on. The narrator is having nice thoughts about kissing a girl under the mistletoe, and then he gets into the reality of his relationship. In retrospect, maybe that was a poor choice. I post, you decide.

Listen to Under the Mistletoe. Right click and highlight “save link as” to add it to your permanent collection.

The second installment of my Christmas with the Flamingos CD. This is the tender story of a vaguely Japanese-sounding squirrel who delivers holiday cheer to children across the globe.

Listen to “Kaburami the Christmas Squirrel“. As always, right click and highlight “save link as” to add to your permanent collection.

From the NY Times:

Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, caused lots of head-scratching Thursday as he tried to explain to a bunch of Wall Street types why his company is not interested in “monetizing” his ridiculously popular Web operation. Appearing at the UBS global media conference in New York, Mr. Buckmaster took questions from the bemused audience, which apparently could not get its collective mind around the notion that Craigslist exists to help Web users find jobs, cars, apartments and dates — and not so much to make money.